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serious crayons:
Some friends and I were talking about going to see them in a couple of weeks. I heard they're still touring with a different drummer. I was on the fence anyway -- I'm not the hugest ZZ Top fan. Sad, though.
CellarDweller:
Yes, it's sad.
Like you, I wasn't the hugest ZZ Top fan, but I have their Greatest Hits CD, which is pretty muck my knowledge of their songs. I knew the songs listed above, plus "Sharp Dressed Man".
After that, I don't have much knowledge of their music or career.
CellarDweller:
only 14 days in to 2022, and it's not been a kind year for the world of music.
Musician, writer, producer James Mtume has died
James Mtume, a musician who recorded with jazz greats before leading the R&B group Mtume, has died. His son Faulu Mtume confirmed the news to Pitchfork. He was 75.
Mtume was born James Heath Jr., the son of jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath, in Philadelphia. He was raised by his mother Bertha Forman and pianist James ?Hen Gates? Forman, who played in Charlie Parker?s band. Forman introduced the young Mtume, literally, to some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time.
?Just imagine, you?re nine, ten years old and there?s Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins,? Mtume told Red Bull Music Academy in 2014. ?I never was hip enough to know just how brilliant a situation that was, but what I did know about jazz musicians were they were an extraordinary group. Witty, funny. There was nothing like sitting around a table of jazz musicians.? In the late 1960s Mtume joined the US Organization, a Black empowerment collective that created Kwanzaa.
https://pitchfork.com/news/james-mtume-jazz-and-randb-musician-dies-at-75/
Following dozens of jazz sessions, he released Kiss This World Goodbye, the debut album of his jazz, funk, and R&B hybrid band Mtume in 1978. The band released 1983?s Juicy Fruit. The title track became the band?s biggest hit, and it was famously sampled on the Notorious B.I.G.?s ?Juicy.? The band followed it with two more albums: 1984?s You, Me and He and 1986?s Theater of the Mind. In 1986, James Mtume composed the music for the film Native Son.
Beyond his work with the band Mtume, James was a prolific songwriter and producer. He and Reggie Lucas co-wrote Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway?s ?The Closer I Get to You? and Stephanie Mills? ?Never Knew Love Like This Before.? Mtume referred to the Mtume-Lucas sound as ?sophistifunk.?
Billboard R&B Top 40 singles of Mtume.
Year Song Title Peak Position on Billboard Top 40 Chart
1980 - "Give It On Up" #26
1983 - "Juicy Fruit" #1
1983 - "Would You Like To" #11
1984 - "You, Me and He" #2
1984 - "C.O.D (I'll Deliver)" #20
1986 - "Breathles" #9
1986 - "P.O.P. Generation #39
Here is Mtume's biggest hit.
CellarDweller:
Musician Calvin Simon from Parlaiment Funkadelic has died
Calvin Eugene Simon was an American singer who was a member of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 along with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic.
Simon started out in the late 1950s as one of The Parliaments, a doo wop barbershop quintet led by George Clinton. In 1978, Simon (along with other original Parliaments Fuzzy Haskins and Grady Thomas), left Parliament-Funkadelic after financial and management disputes with Clinton. In 1981, the trio caused confusion when they formed a new band, and released an album called Connections & Disconnections under the name Funkadelic. In 1998, Thomas, along with original Parliaments bass vocalist Ray Davis, Haskins, and Grady Thomas, founded Original P, performing until his departure in 2007.
Billboard R&B Top 40 singles of Parliament.
Year Song Title Peak Position on Billboard R&B Top 40 Chart
1971 "Breakdown" #30
1974 "Up for the Down Stroke" #10
1975 "Chocolate City" #24
1976 "P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)" #33
1976 "Tear the Roof off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)" #5
1976 "Mothership Connection (Star Child)" #26
197 6 "Do That Stuff" #22
1977 "Bop Gun (Endangered Species)" #14
1978 "Flash Light" #1
1978 "Funkentelechy" #27
1978 "Aqua Boogie (A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop)" #1
1979 "Party People" #39
1980 "Theme from the Black Hole" #8
1980 "Agony of DeFeet" #7
Billboard R&B Top 40 singles of Funkadelic.
Year Song Title Peak Position on Billboard R&B Top 40 Chart
1969 "I'll Bet You" #22
1970 "I Got A Thing, You Got A Thing" #30
1970 "I Wanna Know If It's Good To You" #27
1972 "A Joyful Process" #38
1974 "Standing On The Verge of Getting It On" #27
1976 "Undisco Kid" #30
1978 "One Nation Under A Groove" #1
1979 "Not Just (Knee Deep)" #1
CellarDweller:
Ronnie Spector - Lead Singer for The Ronnettes - Has Died
Veronica Greenfield, known as Ronnie Spector, was an American singer who formed the girl group the Ronettes in 1957 with her elder sister Estelle Bennett and their cousin Nedra Talley. Bennett fronted the group while record producer Phil Spector produced the majority of their output. The two were married in 1968 and separated in 1972.
Bennett sang lead on the Ronettes' string of hits in the early-to-mid?1960s. In 1964, she launched a solo career with the single "So Young". After 1980, she released five studio albums: Siren (1980), Unfinished Business (1987), Something's Gonna Happen (2003), Last of the Rock Stars (2006), and English Heart (2016). Bennett also recorded one extended play, She Talks to Rainbows (1999). In 1986, she experienced a career resurgence when she was featured on Eddie Money's song "Take Me Home Tonight".
Bennett was sonetimes referred to as the original "bad girl of rock and roll". In 1990, she published a memoir, Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, Or, My Life as a Fabulous Ronette. In 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Ronettes.
Billboard Hot 100 Top 40 singles of The Ronnettes.
Year Song Title Peak Position on Billboard Top 40 Chart
1963 - "Be My Baby" #2
1963 - "Baby I Love You" #24
1964 - "(The Best Part Of) Breakin' Up" #39
1964 - "Do I Love You" #34
1964 - "Walking In The Rain" #23
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